Wednesday, March 02, 2005

birthing tropicalia

In the late '60s, a new Brazilian popular music arose in direct reaction to social complacency stemming from the coup of 1964 and the musical clichés of pop music. The music that arose, Tropicalia, is bound together more by an ideology of social awareness and the drive to be musically creative than by any single set of musical characteristics. Comparing the songs of tropicalia musicians, it can be discerned that the greatest common bond is in the lyrics, which are well thought-out, keyed to musical events of the accompaniment, poetic, elegant, and above all, socially aware. But tropicalia lasted for only a few years.

The first Caetano Veloso solo album was recorded in 1967. Soon after Veloso and his group (which would soon constitute the Tropicalia movement) were news, dividing opinions concerning the group's interest in fusing Brazilian music with international pop culture, lysergic psychedelia, generalized irreverence, and whatever crossed their minds. The arrangements were done by three classically trained composers, fully committed to the most adventurous experiments in modern music: Júlio Medaglia, Damiano Cozzella, and Sandino Hohagen. Veloso's concept was that the album should surpass the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's, being also very Brazilian and, at the same time, international. The record has immortal classics composed under the effect of the recent death of Che Guevara. "Tropicália," the title track, was an unnamed song when its recording began. By suggestion of the then photographer Luís Carlos Barreto, Veloso used the same name of an installation by the visual artist Hélio Oiticica, which was composed by a labyrinth made with plants and birds conducing to a television set. The suggestion was accepted -- and the Tropicalia was born. - AMG